20241117

Feeling a particular kind of glow :) I know what I'm doing. I can see what's coming.

I found another way to think about my sense of what wants to happen next: I can think of them as memories of when I was that song. Don't read too far into the choice of tenses there.

three-body linkages/engines

(previously seen, though not named, in 20241031)

(see also ooo.fun)

When multiple conscious agents get together, it's useful to consider what's Known/Unknown/Knowable in the spaces between them.

A = Known, B = Knowable, C = Unknown. This is all from the perspective of a conscious observer, who is A. A can see into B a bit, but can't know all of B. A can't see C at all, but they understand that whoever's hanging out in B gets to interact with others that A can't see, and so A understands that C is an entity they can reason about, if only indirectly.

This is how trade works. A sends information to B, B sends information back to A. They trade, establish a rhythm (possibly even a super complex rhythm, which we tend to call "language").

If B wasn't also engaged in trade with C, A and B risk homogenizing. The unknown parts of B would diminish, and the whole thing would become Known. At that point, we're back to a single (larger) A, interacting with B-formerly-C.

But B is trading with C, and so the contents of B change over time, from A's perspective. If A was unaware that B was engaging with C, A would start to question A's sanity, as A's spotlight moves around B, and doesn't see the same thing twice in the same spot. But A knows that C exists, so A expects B to vary a bit.

Of course we don't only interact with one Other. A doesn't interact with only one B. I mean they might depending on the specific context or scope, but you know, there are other B's.

Note that the B's are sharing a C. This is what it simplifies down to (the Unknown doesn't have internal borders), but you could also conceive of each B having their own C.

Or whatever this is:

When you do that kind of multiplication, you can also rotate and simplify all the shared segments so that you end up with something like this:

Which is ... just a cell, I think?

What does that mean?

Anyway,

I can’t be advertising for people to enter my Known

That felt important earlier today. It was something to do with being autistic, linking that to ... hm. I forget.

don’t replace yourself

I’m more of a custodian than a CEO, most of the time.

leadership positions (probably should have capitalized both of those) are things that need warm bodies in them

if I put myself in a leadership position, I’d have to replace myself to move on

I don’t think that works

nobody can do you. nobody can approximate you without being near you. replacing yourself is a non-starter.

you’ve gotta design yourself away

which, honestly, is what a custodian does cyclically. a custodian resolves a scene and moves on. and eventually comes back around. it’s a rhythm, and it flexes.

leadership positions feel much less useful to me, systemically

food as body-learning

I've been thinking about it that way. Out in the wild, things ate things that were nearby, and their bodies and organs learned about the world around them in that way.

So I'm eating plants here, right, and I'm looking at each different kind of leaf and grain and I'm thinking, what is my body learning from this? What patterns is it picking up?

Putting aside the idea of food as resource (calories, nutrients, fiber), what about food as pattern? If our bodies are learning (and everything learns) from what they experience via the food we ingest, ... what are they likely to be learning?

You can "teach" someone, but you can't ever know for certain exactly — exactly — how the idea is recreated in someone else's head. You can't know exactly what they learn. But you can sort of optimize, test them to see if what they express lines up with what you understand they'd express if they got the idea the way you were thinking about it. The space between two Knowables (B) is always Unknown (C). But... "food choice as teaching [all the living things in your body, your body is your classroom and you teach it as you eat]" feels like it really has legs.

I think, in a way, I'm trying to find ways to feel known.

I don't carry around an identity these days, which means that the notion of "me" versus "you" is somewhat blurry for me. and yet, specific attention, even affection, is something that one is nourished by

ah hm. I think I'm also releasing/burying the old ideals that I pulled myself toward. I say I don't carry an identity, but I might say it better if I phrased it in terms of not trying to comply with specific identity details for a reason other than natural self-expression. I felt deeply about those ideals, those models. I loved those versions of me, in a way. and now that I'm not carrying them in my mind anymore, it's sort of like letting someone go.

I'm not saying the specific attention/affection thing doesn't remain relevant, but there's definitely a trace of the kind of ache that is relieved over time, because something is released over time.